Waiting for Such a Time as This

The first draft of chapter one of Understanding the Timesis complete! Let me know what you think of these concluding paragraphs by commenting below:

For most of my life I wished I lived in a Lord of the Rings moment, an age of defining battles and a clear difference between good and evil. The truth is, we do live in an epic time. What we do now will affect the world for hundreds of years, for evil as well as for good. In a world of change, small things often become great in consequence. Karl Marx, notorious founder of the world’s most bloody, miserable worldview, did most of his work alone in a quiet library. When Marx died only a handful attended his funeral. And still, as Dave Breese memorably phrased it, his ideas “rule the world from the grave.”

The battle of our time isn’t just a battle for territory or power. It’s a battle for truth. It is your destiny to battle for truth against lies, for justice against injustice, and for good against evil. This is no accident in God’s sovereign plan. It is time for us to be brave and stand up. C.S. Lewis says in God in the Dock that Christians “are tempted to make unnecessary concessions to those outside the Faith.” We give in too much, he says. “We must show our Christian colours, if we are to be true to Jesus Christ. We cannot remain silent and concede everything away.”

Several millennia ago a young Jewish woman named Esther was taken captive from her home and forced to marry King Xerxes, one of the most cruel and pompous kings of ancient history. Sometime afterward, Esther’s uncle Mordecai uncovered a plot, hatched by one of the king’s trusted advisors, to massacre the Jewish people. Mordecai urged Esther to intercede with the king. She informed him that the king, in his paranoia, would have anyone killed who came into his presence without invitation including, presumably, his own queen. But Mordecai pressed her to act by saying, “Who knows but that you have come to a royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14)

Perhaps we, too, have come to a royal position for such a time as this.

Maybe you’re still wondering whether standing for truth is really necessary. And if so, what is the nature of the battle we are fighting? What does the enemy look like? With what kinds of weapons are we to fight? On these points, as we shall see in Chapter Two, Christianity offers such surprising answers that the world is still caught off guard two thousand years after Christ walked the earth.